We begin today’s roundup with The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and his call to Republicans to reject Donald Trump:
He can’t do it, Republicans. It’s time for you to admit that Donald Trump is incapable of even pretending to be an acceptable candidate for president. The question is which side of history you want to be on.
Are you going to stand with him as the balloons drop on the last night of the convention, knowing he shares neither your views nor your values? Are you going to work your hearts out this fall to put an unstable bully in charge of our national defense? Is party unity so much more important to you than trifles such as responsibility, duty and honor?
Philip Bump at The Fix analyzes the latest Fox poll and highlights the huge dissatisfaction with Trump as their nominee:
As we noted on Wednesday, we should be wary of reading too much into national polls at this point -- or, really, ever -- but there's one bit of data in the Fox poll that seems particularly important. When Democrats were asked whether they preferred Clinton as their party's nominee or Bernie Sanders, Clinton was preferred by 21 points. When Republicans were asked if they wanted Trump or "someone else" -- a majority picked someone else. That split includes a wide majority of women and of those with a college degree. Remember: This is only among Republicans.
Meanwhile, Damon Linker at The Week also calls on Republicans to reject Trump for the sake of the country:
I admire and sympathize with #NeverTrump motives. But I've been unable to shake the feeling that the movement's goal is not just futile but also somehow illegitimate. Trump won the nomination fair and square. He pulled in nearly 45 percent of the vote in the GOP primary, which is on the low end historically but not at all unprecedented. He carried 36 states and ended up with 300 more delegates than he needed to clinch the nomination. Roughly 14 million people voted for him, which is 4 million more than Mitt Romney won four years ago. All of which means that Trump seems to deserve the honor of standing as the Republican Party's nominee for president.
The GOP should dump Trump anyway. [...]
It really is that simple: Donald Trump should not be president of the United States. If there is even a small chance of successfully deposing him at the convention — an act that, if it worked, would deprive him of the means to compete in the general election — it should be undertaken. The alternative is complicity in a politically reckless and blatantly irresponsible endeavor: the attempted election of a candidate who deserves to lose.
At The Washington Post, Robert Costa and Karen Tumulty run down the latest on Trump’s search for a vice-presidential candidate:
Donald Trump’s campaign has begun formally vetting possible running mates, with former House speaker Newt Gingrich emerging as the leading candidate, followed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. But there are more than a half dozen others being discussed as possibilities, according to several people with knowledge of the process. […]
Culvahouse, a former White House counsel who is managing the vetting for Trump, was the lawyer who vetted then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the GOP vice-presidential nomination during the 2008 campaign.
Ha!
Vanity Fair’s T.A. Frank writes about what he called the “Trump V.P. career-suicide pact”:
Gingrich manages to be both sycophantic and unreliable—a classic Washington combo. When last consulted by Gallup, in 2012, Americans gave Gingrich impressive unfavorable ratings of 61 percent, which, to be fair, still left 26 percent favorable, numbers that those who know him believe could be brought down with even a token effort. Perhaps joining forces with Trump would create a synergy of unfavorability, bringing the positive ratings down to three, one, or zero percent. So Newt as vice president would be an interesting experiment, provided Trump’s goal was shattering defeat.
On a final note, don’t miss Timothy O’Brien’s column at Bloomberg on Trump’s history with Native Americans:
Maybe all of this speculation about Warren’s lineage just hits too close to home. For years, Trump led the world to believe that he was of Swedish descent, a claim that found its way into his autobiography, “The Art of the Deal.” In truth, he is of German descent, and his family’s original name was Drumpf. Why the switch? As the Trump family repeatedly told reporters, they were concerned that their German heritage would offend Jewish tenants in their buildings. In other words, it would have been bad for business.